Project 2.5

Decision: TKO

I did not meet my goal in the 10 weeks allotted. I did lose some weight, and surprisingly there were no weeks where I gained back even a little of what I had lost previously. But the steady loss of 2.5 lbs a week that I had hoped for was not to be realized.

I stepped on the scales Monday and saw I had lost a scant .8 pounds. I tried to stick really hard to my eating routine through the week but there were some slip-ups. I checked again to see if I had dropped any more weight today, and I had. Half a pound. That brings me to a grand total loss of 19 pounds since I began 10 weeks ago, 6 pounds off my goal.

Certainly my injury, my work schedule, and the 6 hours a week I now spend at the chiropractor has impacted my physical fitness routines. In fact I haven’t been to the gym in about two weeks. I felt working out would really help burn the weight off, and at first I think it did. But when I slowed down, the weight loss slowed down.

It’s not all bad. I did lose weight and I have been eating better for the most part. I got fit enough to finish the Spartan Race. My doctor tells me that my blood pressure and heart rate are outstanding. My woman put her arms around my waist and told me she could tell I was much slimmer now. I don’t have a pair of pants that fit right anymore. All the ones I was wearing are too big and baggy. Having come this far I think with a little serious working out I can shed those last 6 pounds. I think it is possible. 6 pounds is not a high a mountain as I was looking at when it was 25 pounds.

The tokens really helped me. I’m pissed I didn’t get the gold. But being pissed can be very motivating. Now it just hangs there on my vision board, waiting to be won. I can go up 6 pounds in weight (as has been my history as I slack off and let the pounds ease back on), or I can knuckle down and be creative and find ways to go down 6 pounds instead. In the strictest terms of making this goal happen, I failed. However, most losers are entitles to a rematch and a chance to try again. I want my rematch.

How can a loss still be a loss? I lost 1.7 pounds this week, less than the 2.5 I was working towards and behind on my goal. Still, a loss is better than a gain in these circumstances. It seems very unlikely I will reach my goal weight loss of 25 pounds by next week. Of course that doesn’t mean I just give up the fight. With the battering I took over the weekend I don’t know what my gym routine will look like, plus there’s work and now visits to the chiropractor 3X a week (it had better be worth it!).

Juicing doesn’t seem to be helping me right now. I’m still limiting meats and calories, and avoiding breads and sugar. I know I need to drink more water. But I only seem to know it when its too late to actually drink what I need.

I might push on with this goal until all the weight is off. I had never planned to stop at 25 pounds anyway. I may have to take time to listen to my body and feed it and work it in a way that most effectively shaves the weight off.

One more week. Hit me with your best shot. I’m still standin’, Ray… I’m still standin’.

Fighting for a comeback, this week I weighed in, and was exactly the weight I was supposed to be last week, when I made no loss at all. It is a success, but it puts me a week behind and I have the feeling I am not going to reach this goal in the time allotted. I’m trying to hold my head up and recognize that if nothing else, I am a grand 17.5 pounds lighter than when I started, and that it could have easily gone the other way, if I had allowed it. I wish I had a will of iron, instead of foam rubber. I wish I could make this body obey me on all fronts, instead of ignore me or rebel.

My goals for the gym have been shattered this week because of dramatic changes at work involving me (in a good way, I hope). Meeting, meetings, work and meetings. This is a familiar trap and I need a means of not letting the quicksand of my job swallow me up.

I’ve returned to juicing during the day and salads in the evening. I have a craving for sugar these days that’s like a craving for certain other white poweders (or so I’m guessing). While in the store I picked up a package of Easter candy and walked around the whole store, just holding the package. I was able to put it down when the time came to check out, but I thought about it for the rest of the evening, like you think about that girl who flashed you a smile and flipped back her hair. You know you shouldn’t, but you can’t stop thinking about how nice it would be to tear off the wrapper and take a bite of that sweet, sweet, candy.

Uhg!... One week behind, two weeks to go. Drill, ye tarriers, drill.

This past week was a standing eight-count. I took a low blow and didn’t lose any weight this week. I did not meet my goal or go below it. I didn’t gain any weight, either.

The cause is pretty easy to guess: I wasn’t able to workout with the frequency and intensity I’d planned because of a hectic work schedule and some afternoon trips to the chiropractor for initial evaluations. My juice diet suffered a derailment because of my weekend trip to Birmingham where I did not drink juice. We had very light breakfasts at the hotel but S. is one of those people (apparently most people are one of those people) who has to eat on a regular basis. She suffered with two meals a day with me but the meals included some starches I would have preferred to have avoided. Part of my post-diet training is going to have include a strategy for eating out that allows me to enjoy the indulgence without being ruined by it.

This week so far has been a mix of busy and slow, giving me a chance to get my legs back under me and catch my breath. Per the rules I laid out at the beginning of this course, I’m moving down to my next goal token. It sucks that I might have two weeks of failure in meeting my goals before the numbers are back on track. But I’ve got less than three weeks to go and now is not the time to start flagging, stumbling, or throwing weak punches.

Six weeks in, down a total of 16 pounds. I lost a meager .8 pounds, not a weekly 2.5. Not totally unexpected since I was off program over the weekend and ate out twice. Still, it puts me 1 pound below this week’s goal and 1.5 pounds away from next week’s goal, and I expect to reach that pretty easily. I wasn’t bad/bad on my diet, but I wasn’t good/good either. This week will see an increase in protein fuel, rough green vegetables, green smoothies, and more juicing. That’s kinda gonna be the way it is for the next three weeks, in fact. I have the Spartan Race coming up on March 10 and most of my diet and workouts are going to be geared towards getting ready for the race. Trading in my last bronze token for a silver one.

One side effect of losing weight is where I am losing it… and what is left behind. My waist has slimmed down considerably as has my belly. My face is leaner and the other day I was working on a cutting board, cutting some herbs, and my wedding ring tumbled off my finger twice. I now have to double check my latex gloves when I take them off to make sure my ring isn’t left behind and accidentally goes into the garbage. But now I have these odd lumps and bulges where before it was pretty smooth, if a bit fat-laden. I complained to my wife that I had “saddlebags”, squeezing some gooshy handfulls of flesh on my legs. She came over and felt for herself and said it wasn’t saddlebags, just ass-fat. I argued that I don’t even have an ass, so how could it be ass-fat? “Oh, you’ve got an ass, it’s just a little broader than most.” She must have seen the look of shock, hurt, humiliation, despair and dismay on my face, because she hurriedly added: “It’s perfectly okay to be a little ‘hippy’. And besides, you’re working on it, right?”

Damned right, double time.

Weighed in today with a loss of 1.6 pounds from last week. That is 2.7 pounds below my target weight for the the week and .2 pounds below next week’s goal weigh-in. I’m a bit surprised since I juice fasted all week that I didn’t end up with a larger loss. I know I fluctuated up and down by a pound or two during the week. Normally I don’t weigh myself during the week but I did last week and there were times when I was down as much as 3.5 pounds from the beginning of the week. I feel like I lost more weight… but maybe I’m just holding onto to too much water from the weekend or something. Anyway, I’m not going to worry about it since I’m still weighing in lighter than my goal for the next week. I’m mentally preparing to not hit a wall here very soon as I move out of the 200s.

I have a BMI tracker app that I occasionally plug numbers into to see where I am at. When I began this project it cast me in the “obese” range for my height/weight ratio. Now I’m comfortably in the “overweight” section, which is where I will remain for the next five weeks, even if I lose weight according to plan. I really don’t know what to make of these things. It says for me to be in the normal range I’d need to weigh around 165 pounds which to me seems skeletonally thin. I’m not one of those “big boned” excuse makers, but that just doesn’t feel like the right weight to me. I think the measurement scale may just be too broad or err too far on the side of leaness. I going to jugde my overall success by the sag and bulge I can see, and what the bloodwork is telling me regarding cholesterol and such. If I end up still overweight on the BMI scale, so be it. Just more of me to love, baby.

Halfway through, 15.2 official pounds lost.

I’m down 4 pounds from last week’s weigh-in. That puts me 3.6 pounds below my target weight goal for the week, and 1.1 pounds below next week’s goal. Personally I feel this was great progress given that I just haven’t felt I’ve been working out to potential at the gym. This past week was salad week, however, and I replaced a lot of starches and bulk proteins with green salads featuring kale, spinach, tomatoes, avocado, raisins… whatever I could throw in there. I used some homemade dressings and also a fat free Italian vinaigrette. It was kind of a bad week for eating out; S. ambushed me with take-out Chinese one night and we had sushi on Sunday, along with some other foods that felt like they overwhelmed my now-delicate systems.

After 4 weeks I’m down a grand total of 13.4 pounds, past where I hoped to be. Even S. says she can tell I’m looking much slimmer so it can’t all be water-weight. I’m doing a juice fast for the next two weeks, which I think will make weight come off even faster. But then I’m following up with some whey protein drinks and more protein-rich foods, which may slow or even reverse my weightloss initially. As long as I’m staying within the 2.5 pounds goal schedule, I’m okay with regaining a little weight. Sugar and caffine are out, as are bad “white” starches. ‘Course, for the next two weeks, everything is out that can’t be run through a juicer.

This week I dropped 2.2 pounds. That puts me 2.1 pounds below my goal for the week and .4 pounds away from next week’s goal. It is not a loss of 2.5 for the week, as I had intended. Part of this was due to me having to lay off a bit on the physical exercise because of my shoulder. Also, I ate a bit heavier than I had wanted to, being as this was smoothie week. The shoulder is feeling a little bit better and I have some exercises to work around it while it heals, which apparently is going to take the better part of forever and ever.

Even as I am moving downward and trading in my copper tokens for a bronze one, I am mindful of the challenges that still lie ahead. I still have the sugar cravings, and it is only force of will that keeps it at bay. Instinctively I still try to sneak it in and have to stop myself. I have to back off the nuts because I think I’m trying to replace one food addiction with another. Oh, if only I had an addiction for brussels sprouts! Oh, wait… I do!! Oh, if only they were rolled in sugar and chocolate and served off the belly of a pin-up girl and available in piles so I could snack on them endlessly. Brussels sprout-flavored jelly bellys…

Total loss to date: 9.6 pounds. Head down, hard at work, burning off more than I take in.

In my second week I lost 4.8 pounds. That puts me 2.4 pounds under this week’s goal and .1 pounds short of next week’s goal. That is very pleasing. I think a combination of circuit work and cutting out the bad foods has been paying off. I’d love to keep up these kinds of steady, plus-goal losses.

But it is going to be more work, I know. I’m almost over the “sugar shakes” and I have not been a big fan of simple starches and empty carbs for a while. Giving up white rice and white potatoes and flour wasn’t a big sacrifice for me. This week (starting tomorrow am) I am going to be consuming only smoothies. Breakfast is going to be a sweet potato/apple smoothie, lunch a double green smoothie with seaweed and protein powders to support my afternoon workouts, and a fruit smoothie in the evening with fresh juice, coconut water, and occasionally some greek yogurt. I’m going to watch carefully to see if the sugars in the fruit and sweet potato try to derail me. Still no white sugar (raw and genuine honey and raw cane sugar is acceptable in small doses), no HFCS, no “white” food or heavily proccessed foods, and no alcohol for two weeks.

Trading in my Week Two Goal token for Week Three, and pressing onward.

After one week, I’ve lost 2.6 pounds. Perfectly on target. I was hoping for a little more, given my change in diet and workout regimen. But I was also a little worried that not hitting the 2.5 mark would make me feel defeated.

I bought some metallic-tinted polymer clay and stamped out some tokens with each week’s goal weight on them. I brushed them with some powdered metallic pigments, baked them and sprayed them with acrylic fixative. Now I can wear each week’s goal weight around my neck as I work, exercise, hang around the house, go out to dinner, ect., as a physical reminder to stay on track. I can also hang them like little tags on my vision board to reinforce my determination. Three weeks of copper(colored), three weeks of bronze, three weeks of silver, and finally a gold token for when I’ve lost the 25 pounds.

What happens if I lose more than the projected weight? Bonus, I guess. I’m going to keep the goals the same. That applies if I don’t make my target weight loss on a particular week. The following week I have to hit the number on the token, no compromises.

No doubt, the first couple of week will probably be easy losses. After 5 or 7 pounds it will be harder and I will have to make changes to diet and workout routines. Not taking anything for granted or coasting on early successes. Each week will be viewed as a new week, doing whatever it takes to lose 2.5 pounds for that week.

As additional motivation, my wife lost 4.8 pounds on her first week of her work-related weight loss challenge.